Chains and Belts for Final Drive on Electric Motorcycle

I thought it might be helpful to someone to post the info I found on chains and belts. It turns out that the Ninja came stock with a 530 chain. That means it is 5/8" pitch with a 3/8" wide roller which it turns out is the same a 50 series industrial chain as far as I can tell so I am planning to run a stock (new) 46Tooth rear sprocket and then buy an industrial chain and front sprocket that is 7/8" bore with 3/16 key. This will drop onto the Motenergy motors I am looking at. It also gives me tons of options for gearing changes to tweak acceleration / speed.

I did look at a possible toothed belt drive, but the cost of pulleys is ridiculous and every time you do a gear change, it is likely that you will have to change belts as well. Another big neg is the massive size of the rear wheel pulley. Oh yeah, one more neg, unless you have a removable section in your rear suspension, you can't get a belt onto the frame. The E-Bomb does have a removable section so it is a possibility, but not worth the cost.

Tank hacking continues

When you are racing, baffles are a good thing. When you taking apart a tank, they are not your friend. I keep feeling the urge to get the plasma cutter, but the 4th if July is still a week away so i resist.
I was thinking some purist restoration guy might be annoyed that i am hacking this tank. After seeing the inside, i did that guy a favor.
This means more of the original 500 lbs is gone.
Now i think i will dare to get a 3"cutoff in there to clean things up. The objective if this project is not to create a show queen, but to create a rolling functional test bed, a veritable two wheeled laboratory of learning.

Starting the Hack 

 

The bottom of the tank removed 

 

The Rust! 

 

The tank still fits the chassis 

Modifying the gas tank

A bullet bike will look kinda silly without a big bulky tank so i an gonna keep it. After i cut the bottom out I'm hoping it will make a nice cover for the controller and electronics.

Naked Chassis

The chassis is getting cleaner, but still not perfect. More degreaser and hand wiping will be necessary. The old headlight is kinda cool and came from 37 chevy. I think it belongs on the E-Bomb.

Paint Rear Wheel

After a bunch of cans of de-greaser the e-bomb still looks rough. I am now going to have to resort to wiping with degreaser. I cleaned up the rear wheel and painted it last night.

E Bomb intro

This is a location to cover the E-Bomb project by Invenscience.

This is basically an electric conversion of a motorcycle.

I started with a purchase of a 1989 Ninja ZX7 that I purchased for $500. It ran at the time, but was really beat and ugly. The hope is to sell the parts pulled from it to offset some of the cost of the new parts. This is a follow on project to an electric bike conversion I did about 8-10 months ago. It turned out to be pretty useful and I get about 30 mph out of it for about 30 miles. That works out pretty nicely for running errands around town, but to really be a commuter, I would like to be able to run with traffic to make things a bit safer. What I am looking for is something that can do 60-70 mph for at least 15 miles with good acceleration. I do not need a show bike, but rather a rolling testbed for learning. It will be a bit of a rat-rod motorcycle with a smattering of tech.  Hence E-Bomb.

Here's a pic of the E-Bomb when I brought it home:

It was very rough as motorcyles go, but had a good, clean title and ran and the brakes appeared to work and it had good tires which is really all I care about. The fact that it was missing a muffler, plastic, fairing etc didn't really matter.

I tore it down to the basic frame for cleaning and to evaluate what I wanted to keep and what was to go on ebay. After hacking it looks like this:

It was pretty grimy and took a lot of cans of degreaser and pressure washing.